I watch the tides come in and go out as I am riding the train into the city and back home again. Between Newark and New York City, there are large stretches of marshland, rivers, and water-ways. The marshes are all brown and tan this time of year and when the sun is setting or rising, they are golden. It seems strange to see these marshes full of reeds and other water-plants in such urban settings – bridges, trestles, tracks, some abandoned factories, stranded boats sitting cockeyed on the banks of rivers. Yet, here are wetlands and in the spring the green pushes up and it is quite striking.
In the summer months when the wind blows, these stretches of land remind me of wheat fields in the plain states that cover acres and as the wind blows waves move across the landscape. It is like that.
In the wetlands – the marshes – as the tide comes in new “rivers” or “creeks” appear where water runs in to fill the marsh and again when the water drains away as the tide goes out. Nature moves in her own rhythm – coming and going, change, death and life. Creation.